Jennie Kissed Me (21 page)

Victoria and I left. “I’m going to Munsons’
,
” she said. “I’ll say your good-byes for you.”

I knew what was expected of a legend and gave her a coin to give Mrs. Munson for Paul. From my bedroom window I gazed out on the terraced gardens. It was a beautiful day. One of those marvelous spring days when some green enchantment hangs on the air. Sunlight gleamed on Capability Brown’s serpentine stream, luring me outdoors. Victoria had left, and it was unlikely that Marndale would be wandering in the garden. I picked up my parasol and ran down the servants’ stairs. Cook’s helper looked hopefully at my parasol, but I held on to it and got outdoors before having to dispense any more reluctant charity.

To insure privacy I hurried away from the house. The roses were in bloom, filling the eye with beauty and the air with perfume, but I wanted a wilder, more romantic ambience for my repining. I strolled along the edge of the serpentine, determined to trace it to its natural source, before Brown had got at it with his artistic clumps of three birches and flowering shrubs.

I came at last to a wilderness that perhaps indicated the edge of Marndale’s domain or at least of his cultivated park. The banks of the stream were higher and more sharply inclined. On top of the slope a wall of intertwining camellias grew as tall as trees. The jungle of branches and dark green leaves was bereft of blossoms in this season save for one lone white flower that had bloomed late. I wanted to pick it, but it was too high.

I found a rock and sat down, gazing at the flowing stream below, edged in swaying sedge with a carpet of bog myrtle climbing up the embankment. Wild flowers dotted the meadow on the other side. Campion, buttercups, daisies, and ragged robin bathed in the golden sunlight. It was a scene to clutch at the heartstrings and make a lady wish she could live forever amidst such beauty. But spring would pass, and the flowers would die. The grass would turn brown and sere, the blue skies fade to lead, and the golden sunlight hide behind fog.

These were my thoughts when I heard the clatter of hooves. Looking up, I saw in the distance a mounted rider cantering through the meadow, advancing toward me. As I watched the rider took the form of a gentleman in a curled beaver and a blue coat. At closer range I saw the gentleman was Lord Marndale. I could either take to my heels and run, like a widgeon, or sit and hope he passed with no more than a tip of his hat.

His mount slowed when he reached the stream and picked its way daintily across not two yards from me. A word at least was required.

“A lovely day for a ride, Marndale,” I said.

“You said you were going to the Munsons’
,
” he replied.

He was coming from that general direction. On horseback he did not have to stick to the roads. I felt in my bones he had been there looking for me.

“I changed my mind. I was with Mrs. Irvine, but she is having a nap.”

He drew his gelding to a stop and dismounted. It was impossible to read his mood. He looked fairly grumpy. “Then we can have our talk now,” he said, turning from me to tie his mount to a nearby tree.

“We’ve already had it. My answer is no.”

He looked over his shoulder at me. His dark eyes wore a glint of mischief or danger—or perhaps something else. “You haven’t heard my question yet.”

Chapter Seventeen

It was a large, low, table-like rock that I sat on. Marndale came forward and sat beside me. His longer legs had some difficulty arranging themselves. “I’ve just been to the Munsons’
,
” he said.

“Very likely you met Victoria there.”

“Yes. She said you were having a nap.” He moved his legs about, trying to get comfortable.

“How are the twins?”

“Paul has a touch of colic.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?” It was beginning to look like another of those pointless conversations leading nowhere. Next we would be saying what a beautiful day it was.

“Mrs. Munson does not seem unduly concerned.” He gave up on getting comfortable and sat with his knees jackknifed up before him.

“Good.”

“Jennie.” His voice had taken on a new tone, a tone that augured a departure from banality.

I felt a rush of color to my cheeks and looked across the water. “What a beautiful day it is,” I said in that trite, stupid way of a person ill at ease.

“Yes. Jennie–”

“Is all this your land?”

“As far as the eye can see. What I was going to—” He could not hold the jackknife position. He moved farther back on the rock, which helped the disposition of his legs but put his head twelve inches behind mine. He edged forward again.

“I wondered, as I do not see the hand of Capability Brown here.”

“Jennie!”

His peremptory tone required that I adopt an expression of surprise. “What is it, Marndale? Is something the matter?”

He stood up once more and leaned down to me. “I made a wretched botch of it this morning. It isn’t a companion for Jennie that I want. It is a wife.”

“Your visit to the Munson twins has reminded you of your duty to the estate and title, I collect?”

One hand flailed the air futilely. “I don’t want a son! Well—of course I want a son, but that is not what I am trying to say.”

I adopted my schoolmistress’s owl-like pose, for as the long-awaited moment approached, I found myself without a suitable expression to put on and did not wish to display my unbridled delight. “For goodness’ sake, Marndale, what are you trying to say? It is not so difficult after all. You either want a son or you don’t.”

He reached out his two hands and drew me up from the rock. “I want a son, and I want a mother for Victoria, and most of all, I want a wife.” His eyes burned into mine, and as he enumerated his wants his voice became husky.

“And you want these two ladies in one body?” I asked weakly.

“I want them in your body.” He was still holding on to both my hands. He released one, and his arm went around my waist.

“I have my own plans for this body, Marndale.”

“I would not require all twenty-four hours of its time. Perhaps we can work out some mutually satisfactory arrangement.” His other arm went around my shoulders in a disturbingly familiar way. A warbler, or perhaps it was a chiff-chaff, came to examine us with a glittering black eye, from the safety of a branch.

“What did you have in mind?”

He drew me insensibly closer, while his dark eyes hypnotized me into silence. “What I had in mind, Jennie, was—this,” he whispered. His lips alit on mine, softly as a breeze. The gentleness of his kiss surprised me. I had anticipated something more in the nature of a ravishment. This filial touch scarcely warranted anything in the nature of a reciprocation on my part. He lifted his head and peeped down at my questioning face.

What he saw there gave him confidence, and soon I was being embraced much more satisfactorily. I have read somewhere that when a lobster is brought to the boil from cold water, he does not realize he is being cooked alive. The reason I mention boiling a lobster at this seemingly inappropriate time is that Marndale’s attack was like that. He increased the heat of his embrace by insensible degrees till his lips were scalding mine.

I felt the touch of his jacket against me then gradually became aware of the firm wall of chest beneath it. All at the same time his lips moved on mine in such a distractingly delightful way that I forgot about his chest. I didn’t notice it again until my ribs started to ache from the pressure of his arms. At no particular instant did my mind alert me to danger, but I realized at some point that he was crushing me against him so fiercely that I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt as if they would burst.

I made an ineffectual, token effort to release myself. This had the effect of increasing his ardor. When my head began to spin from a lack of air, I summoned all my strength and pushed him away. I was panting from the exertion—or perhaps from the sheer emotional exhaustion engendered by that embrace. In this breathless state speech was beyond me.

Marndale was made of sterner stuff. He blasted me with a smile of devastating intimacy and said, “I thought as much!”

“What on earth do you mean?” I panted out.

“Jennie Robsjohn, you are an imposter! An enchantress in prude’s clothing. I have not only found myself a wife and mother, I have also got a schoolmistress and hostess and—mmmm.” His head came closer as he enumerated my duties. That “mmmm” came from the throat, for his lips were on mine.

The chiff-chaff chirped his approval from the bough. The stream continued on its path toward the artistic serpentine of Capability Brown’s devising. The trees basked in the glory of golden sunlight, and I found myself betrothed to Lord Marndale without his having asked the question or my having formally agreed to anything.

We walked home through the park arm-in-arm with his mount following. “I hope you are not in the habit of picking up strange ladies in inns, Charles?” I asked in that proprietary way of a lady who is sure of a satisfactory reply.

“My scheme at the time was only to make you Vickie’s companion. I knew when I heard you lash out at me that you were the one to control her.”

“You make her sound like a lion. She is docile as a lamb, when she is handled properly. She takes after her papa in that respect.”

“I was not feeling so docile when Anselm landed in, claiming you as his long-lost friend.”

“Then why did you bring him back?”

“He was an integral part of the working weekend. That job was to have been done in London. I only changed the venue because I was afraid you would either find yourself another beau or shear off on me completely. I invited Rita Pogue to keep Anselm in check.” His quizzing smile held a hint of accusation.

“The coal scuttle was
not
my idea, Charles! I don’t want you harping on that for the next thirty years.”

“Whose idea was it that
I
was the gentleman she went calling on in the middle of the night?”

“That appeared to be a universal conclusion reached by us all. I understood she was a particular friend of yours.” It was my turn to give a quizzing, accusing smile.

“Merely an acquaintance. One meets her everywhere.” No stain of guilt colored his face. He was either an accomplished liar or innocent. I had fifty or so years, God willing, in which to determine the case, and if he was guilty, then I must put an end to such carrying on.

“I thought when you were so eager for me not to attend your dancing party that you required all your attention for Lady Pogue.”

“No, no. That was to keep you from Anselm. I knew he was carrying on with Rita, but that was not to say he wouldn’t snap up a wife if he met a lady his family would accept.”

“And keeping me from Anselm was also the reason you gave permission for that untimely wilderness excursion?”

“But of course. I didn’t want Anselm at you behind my back. When it rained all day, however, I was assailed by guilt, and decided to rescue you from the bog. No—don’t even think it! I did
not
know the woods were so wet. I hadn’t been through them since last autumn, when they were perfectly passable.”

Such was our conversation as we strolled at a leisurely pace. Had Marndale and I not come to an agreement, I would have been embarrassed to find Mrs. Irvine seated at her ease in the garden when she was supposed to be on the rack. To make matters worse, she jumped up when she saw us approaching and lit out for the back door with hardly a limp, though she did use a cane. Marndale called, and she stopped running.

“I am so happy to see you are feeling a little stouter, Mrs. Irvine,” I smiled.

She examined me for signs of irony or anger. “The day was so fine I just hobbled out for a breath of air,” she replied, with a simpering, apologetic smile at Marndale.

“You should not be standing on that ankle,” he said, and led her back to her chair. We sat beside her in the rose garden.

“No, no, her shoulder was the excuse for remaining,” I reminded him. “How is it, Mrs. Irvine?”

“Since I am revealed as a liar, I might as well admit it is fine, thank you very much.” Her sharp eyes darted from Marndale to myself in a knowing way. “You two look about as merry as grigs in May. Is there something you want to tell me?”

“We are engaged,” I told her. “I have captured Lord Marndale’s heart.”

“And a few other organs, from the sly grin on both your faces. Well, congratulations, Jennie. I didn’t think you’d ever pull it—”

“Is Victoria back yet?” I asked hastily.

“Her rig rattled down the road five minutes ago. Have you settled on a date?”

“No,” I said, too deep in love to think of such practical things.

“If you want me to attend, you must do it up soon and let me get back to Bath.”

“You will be leaving us then, Mrs. Irvine?” Marndale asked. He had the grace to try for an air of disappointment.

“If there is one thing that sets my teeth on edge, it is being around lovers. They are intolerable for the first few weeks, till the thrill of it all wears thin. Then they become conversable again. I’ll come back for a visit later on, if you’ll have me.”

“Don’t wait till we have fallen out of love, or we shan’t see you for a long, long time,” he smiled.

Mrs. Irvine shook her head ruefully. “At least the house is big enough for me to get lost in. Aboard the
Prometheus
we did not have that luxury. We had to watch the moonlings making cow eyes at each other.”

Victoria came running down the path, still in her bonnet. “I just passed a haywain on the main road, Papa!” she announced triumphantly. “It was as wide as a house. There was barely room for a mouse to get by, but I squeaked through without locking wheels or damaging the carriage. I have chosen the color I want to paint it, and—” She stopped chattering and just looked at us. “Why are you grinning? Papa, have you done it? Did she say yes?” she asked eagerly.

“Jennie has agreed to be my wife.”

“Splendid! When can I have my twin brothers? I want to call them James and John, since Mrs. Munson has already used the names Peter and Paul.”

“Twins?” Marndale exclaimed. “I will be happy with one boy. Two would be icing on the cake.”